The garden centres are full of lovely cyclamens at the moment.....

A friend always gives me a cyclamen for Christmas and I always seem to kill it off. However, at one of the places I work they had a cyclamen that lasted for years; kept it on a window sill and put it in the sink over the weekend with just a bit of water in the bottom. My son and daughter were both given a cyclamen each a couple of years ago; my son's has grown really well although it's on a window sill above a radiator whereas my daughter's one is in a window in a room next to the conservatory and that hasn't grown well at all..all long and droopy and sideways, so I reckon good sunlight is very important. The joke is that it has come to my house to recover [the house of the doomed pot plant; abandon hope every pot plant that enters here....]. When I went away for 2 weeks my son didn't bother to water his; it looked very dead when I got home but, a drink of water and it sprung back to life again.

Sorry I see JessM has already advised this treatment.
I whizzed down too quickly.

Cyclamen do not like warm rooms and CH.prefer cool conditions with pot standing on a bed of pebbles.
Don't water from above.Leave until well drooping then put pot into a bowl of water for an hour or so.They will then usually revive as if by magic.

Yup kittylester i think they are maltreated before purchase in some places. Homebase for instance is pretty brutal. And I guess many of them have been trucked from Netherlands. ? May be better value to pay a tad more from a garden centre where they are a little more plant conscious. They were queueing to get into Dobbies today so gave it a wide berth.

I have them planted round an olive tree (in a pot) on our south facing and sheltered patio. They come up wonderfully every year.

I recently re-planted the bulbs I brought from our old house to this one in a large planter outside the front door, and to give a bit of colour till they come through I planted half a dozen cyclamen on top of them. Something (squirrels I am supposing) dug them up three days running and left them all over the drive, so they have had to take their chances in the back garden where they seem to be quite happy and undisturbed. I had cyclamen in tubs that survived several winters at our last house. I am hopeless with house plants so never grow anything indoors if I can help it... my DIL gave me an arum lily in a pot for a housewarming present and within a week it had keeled over and died! She was not impressed.

What a treat, jingl. It obviously loves it there.

I have a tub of 'patio' cyclamen which have been blooming happily for at least two months now. I keep dead-heading them and taking off any yellow leaves. I don't know if they will survive a frost, but it hasn't happened yet. The tiny ones have spread around the garden and show no ill effects from the last two hard winters.

We get loads of outdoor ones down here in the south-east. They spread well too.

I have just discovered one from last Xmas (from the lav) that I stuck outside, pot on it's side, and it's got lovely red flowers on it again!

Will not risk bringing it in. Will leave it outside back door.

I adore the white ones. I get mine to last a goodish time indoors, and have found they don't like to stand in water, so after a good soak, a good drain is a good idea, and a nice cool spot - I've had one sitting in a north and draughty windowsill and it did very well, much to my surprise.

Jess that is exactly how I look after my cyclamen and I often have them in flower until April. I keep mine on a sort of glass corridor/sitting room upstairs which we can see whenever we go up or down the stairs. I think sometimes they are kept badly before we buy them!

Such gorgeous colours. I may pop into the garden centre where they have a fantastic carpet of pot plants at this time of year all in reds and pinks...

In the wild they grow underneath roots of trees in places like Greece. So they really don't like to be wet.
The wee ones do very well indoors or out and always worth sticking in a corner of the garden after they bloom.
A man in swansea market once sold me one of the big ones and told me:
Only water when they start to droop
Water by standing the pot up to its chin in water, Not by watering from above
If you water from above you rot the leaf bases on top of the corm
Try to remove dead bits by pulling off, with the aim of removing the whole stalk rather than leaving a bit to rot at the bottom (tricky)

I once re-wilded a cyclamen someone had given me. I was told to plant the corm outside when the flowers died (summer) and then bring the plant in again for winter. Well, I forgot to bring it in but it was fine and started reproducing so we had a lovely display of cyclamen in the autumn every year. That was in Oxfordshire and it was in a dryish part of the garden. I haven't seen cyclamen growing outside in Argyll where I am now. Maybe it's just too wet.

Mine lives on the kitchen window sill and seems to thrive on neglect! i have had it for 4 years. I water it when I remember, but it probably absorbs water from the steam in the kitchen when I am cooking. The kitchen is only hot when I have the oven on as I keep the radiator turned down. The kitchen is EXTREMELY small, so gets very hot when cooking.
So the plant probably likes :-

Extreme heat twice a week
Lack of water
An occasional sauna
Oh, and the draught when I open the window to cool the room down!!!

They thrive in my cold toilet.

Oh! Window boxes! Is that what they're for?!

I wondered why people keep buying them. (They must do or the garden centres wouldn't keep stocking them)

Yes, I've just watched a lovely white cyclamen go downhill today, despite my best efforts - they just don't like any warmth at all. I'll put them in window boxes from now on and enjoy looking at them when I'm stood at the kitchen sink.